Last week he opened the new ABode Hotel in Piccadilly, Manchester, and already has the food critics salivating at the quality of the cuisine he is serving inside the hotel's subterranean fine dining restaurant.
He has promised Michelin stars will be won here, the first in the city centre in a quarter of a century. With his record, only a fool would question that resolve.
Michael is very much a product of his upbringing, schooling and the almost fatal accident awhich cost him his arm at the age of 25 but fuelled his determination to overcome any hurdle that was put in his way.
He learned his trade under kitchen legends like Raymond Blanc and later, in France, worked with fellow `trainee' Gordon Ramsay under French food legend Bernard Loiseau. Ramsay is still a close personal friend.
Michael so impressed the enigmatic Blanc that in 1995 the celebrated chef recommended that his young protégé take over the exclusive restaurant at Gidleigh Park.
"I was very focused on wanting to be the best chef," he says. "I wanted to work in all the best restaurants, so I put myself in tough environments right from day one. It's what I wanted to do.
"Between the ages of 22 to 25, I thought life would carry on like that forever, I felt kind of invincible.
"I'd come home from France where I was so used to being tired, and I just kept pushing myself. And I came to Gidleigh, and I was working seven days a week because it's a new job and obviously I wanted to make the right impression."
And it was that non-stop hard-working lifestyle which directly led to him crashing his car and almost dying.
He says: "I was on my way to a christening. I just felt myself becoming more and more tired, and I fell asleep at the wheel.
"And as the car hit the barrier I woke up. The car rolled and turned over. The whole roof collapsed in and my arm was ripped off.
"I was conscious throughout the accident, and I was lying upside-down in the car. I saw a hand and I looked over and there was just a complete loss of arm from my shoulder.
"All I kept on thinking was, `My life is ruined, I've lost my arm, how can I carry on cooking?'"
But these thoughts didn't last long as Michael was quickly back in the kitchen.
"When I came out of anaesthetic I immediately said I still wanted to carry on, I did not want to let this beat me," he says.
"All the time and effort I had put into learning my trade, I wasn't about give that up. The accident made me incredibly focused on achieving. And it made me even more determined to succeed. If someone said something couldn't be done I'd set out to prove that it could."
His love of food comes started at an early age. Of mixed race descent (his mother was white English and his father black Jamaican) he was adopted as a baby by a white family in rural Devon.
And he learned the benefits of local home-grown produce almost before he learned to walk.
Michael says: "I grew up in a large family, and my love of food and cooking came from the big family meals we always shared together, prepared by my mother, who was a wonderful cook.
"My father grew vegetables and fruit in our garden, and so I grew up loving and understanding the flavours of fresh foods, picked that day and simply prepared."
He's kept the same ethos throughout his career and it is a hallmark of his own cooking. He sources all his ingredients locally and is passionate about good quality local produce.
He loves Manchester too. He has fallen in love with the hip Northern Quarter and wants to cement his love affair with his first big city restaurant by kick-starting a a new organisation, featuring all the county's big-hitting chefs - people like Paul Heathcote and Andrew Nutter - to promote Manchester's restaurants throughout the country and then globally.
`Chefs United', the working title of the proposed lobby, wouldn't be just an elaborate chefs' drinking club either, it would push hard to promote Manchester's restaurants and the fabulous cuisine available here.
He's not come here to play the big fish in the small pond but with a respect for the city, its history and culture and a firmly-held desire to be part of the culinary renaissance of Manchester.
"I love it in Manchester. I think this city has so much to offer, and has some fabulous restaurants and chefs," he enthuses.
"It's not just about the history of the industrial revolution or the fantastic architecture and music. We should be promoting that fact that some of the best regional food in the UK is served here too."
His enthusiasm for his new home from home is almost as delicious as his food, it seems. Tweet